NeverDown: Disaster Recovery & BCP Lead

Looking for a seasoned Disaster Recovery & BCP Lead to join the organization in a long-term consultant capacity. This individual will lead enterprise-wide Disaster Recovery (DR), Business Continuity Planning (BCP), and resiliency-readiness efforts across a complex, mission-critical technology environment. The role will serve as the technical owner for disaster recovery strategy, recovery execution, application resiliency planning, recovery readiness, and program maturity. This role will help turn the Never Down resilience strategy into an executable recovery capability across critical applications, infrastructure dependencies, runbooks, testing evidence, and operational handoffs. NO THIRD PARTIES, PLEASE. Hybrid 3 days a week. Must be commutable to Warren, NJ, Westport, CT, or NYC. The ideal candidate brings a strong blend of technical infrastructure expertise, business continuity experience, and leadership capability. They will partner with infrastructure, application, cybersecurity, risk, and business teams to ensure critical systems can be recovered efficiently, prioritized appropriately, and validated through repeatable testing, tabletop exercises, failover events, QA/lab validations, and recovery simulations. This is a hybrid role requiring 3 days per week onsite. Key Responsibilities Initial Priorities / First 90-180 Days Review current DR/BCP documentation, recovery runbooks, application inventories, and testing evidence. Identify priority gaps in recovery readiness, dependency mapping, ownership, recovery sequencing, and remediation tracking. Support Never Down QA Lab, tabletop, failover, and recovery validation activities, with clear reporting on readiness and open risks. Lead and manage the enterprise Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity Planning (BCP) program across business and technology functions. Develop, maintain, and mature DR/BCP strategies, policies, standards, recovery plans, and program governance. Serve as the technical owner for recovery strategy, recovery execution, application resiliency planning, and recovery readiness. Partner with business and technology teams to align recovery capabilities, priorities, and execution models with business needs. Business Impact, Recovery Prioritization & Application Resiliency Conduct and support Business Impact Analyses (BIAs), define RTO/RPO requirements, and validate recovery prioritization methodologies. Maintain application recovery inventories, Application Master data, ownership details, criticality, recovery tiers, recovery procedures, and support contacts. Create and maintain application dependency mappings across infrastructure, applications, databases, network services, cloud services, security controls, monitoring, file transfer, batch, and third-party integrations. Partner with application owners to confirm recovery sequencing, startup order, technical dependencies, and operational readiness. Testing, Recovery Execution & Never Down Readiness Lead DR testing, tabletop exercises, failover events, component-level recovery tests, QA/lab validations, and recovery simulations. Mature repeatable testing structures including scope, prerequisites, success criteria, evidence capture, defects, remediation tracking, and post-test reporting. Coordinate recovery efforts during major incidents, outages, disaster events, and resiliency exercises. Use QA Lab and Never Down validation practices to confirm that recovery plans, runbooks, dependencies, and operational handoffs are executable and repeatable. Runbooks, Metrics, Audit & Continuous Improvement Maintain recovery runbooks, execution playbooks, technical procedures, dependency records, recovery test scripts, and operational evidence. Identify recovery gaps, drive remediation efforts, and continuously improve technology recovery readiness. Track and report on program maturity, test results, recovery readiness, remediation status, resiliency metrics, and audit-ready evidence. Support regulatory, audit, governance, risk, and compliance activities related to business continuity, technology resilience, and disaster recovery; serve as the primary liaison for DR/BCP inquiries. Establish recovery-readiness reporting for critical applications, including test coverage, open gaps, remediation status, evidence completeness, and operational handoff readiness. Requirements Required Qualifications 10+ years of experience in Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity Planning, Crisis Management, Operational Resilience, Technology Risk, or enterprise resiliency programs. Proven experience leading enterprise-scale Disaster Recovery initiatives in complex, mission-critical environments. Strong understanding of application recovery planning, recovery prioritization methodologies, RTO/RPO validation, and business impact analysis. Experience creating and maintaining application inventories, Application Master data, recovery runbooks, testing evidence, and dependency maps. Technical knowledge across infrastructure, networking, databases, cloud, cybersecurity controls, monitoring, backup/recovery, and enterprise application environments. Hands-on understanding of infrastructure recovery across compute, storage, virtualization, network, identity, backup/recovery, monitoring, and application platforms. Experience coordinating recovery efforts during major incidents, outages, disaster events, DR tests, tabletop exercises, or failover simulations. Strong ability to interact with both technical teams and senior business stakeholders, with clear communication, documentation, follow-through, and program ownership. Ability to drive remediation across teams where ownership sits with application, infrastructure, cybersecurity, risk, audit, or business owners. Preferred Qualifications Financial Services, Banking, Insurance, investment banking, or other highly regulated industry experience. Experience with enterprise DR tools and technologies such as Zerto, VMware SRM, backup/recovery platforms, CMDBs, ServiceNow, or dependency mapping platforms. Knowledge of cloud resiliency strategies across Azure and AWS environments. Familiarity with governance, risk, compliance, audit, regulatory, and operational resilience frameworks. Experience with QA Lab, Never Down, high availability, failover testing, application resiliency validation, and production-readiness exercises. Experience with VMware/VCF, Citrix/NetScaler, Microsoft 365, DNS, load balancing, firewall, routing, identity, and monitoring dependencies. Relevant certifications such as CBCP, MBCP, CBCI, PMP, ITIL, or similar. Senior program owner who can operate strategically while remaining technically hands-on. Comfortable leading across infrastructure, application, cybersecurity, risk, audit, and business teams. Strong ownership mentality with the ability to drive remediation through completion. Able to translate complex application dependencies and recovery risks into clear, actionable plans. Calm, structured, and decisive during incidents, tests, and recovery events. Focused on repeatability, documentation quality, evidence, readiness metrics, and measurable program maturity. #J-18808-Ljbffr The Connors Group